


Things We Did Wrong

by fleete



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Comment Fic, Episode Related, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, POV Character of Color, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-22
Updated: 2012-08-22
Packaged: 2017-11-12 16:43:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/493455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleete/pseuds/fleete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-ep for 4x02, written for the prompt: <i>Elyan being properly brotherly to Gwen</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things We Did Wrong

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Merlin Fix-It-With-Fluff Fest in 2011, for a prompt by gfeather.
> 
> Contains major spoilers for 4x02.

Elyan waits for her outside the gates of the citadel. A jug of cider is hanging from his crooked index finger, and it weighs down his sword arm in a pleasant stretch. The unspoken consensus amongst the knights had been that they’d spend this night raising a cup or two to Lancelot and drowning their grief in drink. Elyan plans to join them as soon as he checks on his sister.

It’ll be a short delay. Gwen is unlikely to want his comfort.

Their relationship has been awkward since he first returned. Gwen had been angry at him for leaving; he had resented her for making him feel guilty for leaving. But after that initial tension had smoothed, and even after a year had passed, there was a lingering formality in the way they spoke to each other. _Good morning, how are you? I’m well, thanks for asking. Is there anything you need? No, nothing, thank you._

It probably didn’t help that he had jumped at the chance to move out of the forge and into the castle once he was made a knight. He’d thought she’d be happy to have the place back to herself. And perhaps she was, but Elyan never sees her anymore, so he doesn’t know.

So here he is, slouching in a shadow at the gate, waiting for her. He has no idea what he will say, but he is resolved to do _something_ , after seeing her weep so openly at the pyre. And after looking out a window, later, to see her still standing there all alone, hunched into herself. Gods, he hadn’t even known that Gwen and Lancelot had been _friends_. Elyan had actually believed that Gwen disliked Lancelot, for all the times she had seemed to avoid him, and Elyan feels frustrated all over again at how little he knows his own sister.

She walks past him just then, skirts swishing.

“Gwen!”

She startles a bit, spins, and lets out a sigh when she recognizes him. “Hello.” Her features are hard to make out in the dark, but he can tell when she darts a look at the jug he’s carrying. “Are you going to meet the other knights?”

“Later. I thought I would visit you first.” He clears his throat nervously. “We haven’t seen each other much.”

“I don’t think I’ll make very good company tonight, Elyan,” she says wearily.

He nods. “I don’t think any of us are very good company tonight.”

Gwen regards him for a moment, but then nods and turns back toward home. Elyan jogs a couple of steps to catch up and falls into step beside her. They don’t speak as they walk. He glances at her out of the corner of his eye and can make out the rod-like quality of her posture. It’s disturbs him all over again, how upset she is.

Gwen’s always been the strong one, the responsible one. He has a memory (a startlingly clear one for how drunk he was at the time) of an eleven-year-old Gwen standing over his prone body and _scolding_ a tavern keeper for allowing her thirteen-year-old brother to drink his weight in ale. The man had been so bewildered by her that he’d not even responded, just watched as she’d dragged Elyan up, put her neck under one of his arms, and shuffled him down the street. She’d been magnificent, then, his tiny little mother-sister. She’d also told on him to Father, but Elyan _had_ drunk away half their coins.

He has always felt unworthy of her. It’s one of the reasons he left. As a youth, of course, he’d felt resentful, spiteful of Gwen’s and Father’s high expectations, their unrealistic morals, their silly nobility. He knows now that he was simply afraid that he couldn’t be what they asked of him. Even now—riding out daily in the livery of a knight of Camelot, serving a purpose and part a brotherhood—even now, he wonders whether he will not eventually fail.

He’s waiting for the day that Arthur shows up to ask him for Gwen’s hand, because he knows enough of Arthur to know that it will happen, and Elyan will have to explain somehow that the likes of Guinevere—good, fierce, _regal_ Guinevere—could never be handed over to someone by the likes of Elyan. If anything, Gwen will _bestow_ herself on Arthur, and Arthur had just better be grateful for it. Elyan thinks he will, though, and it’s for that reason that he thinks Arthur Pendragon perhaps deserves her. They are the same kind of noble, those two. 

As was Lancelot, come to think of it.

They arrive at the forge, which is dark and cold, and Elyan catches Gwen’s shoulder when she goes for the woodpile.

“Let me,” he says, and goes about building up a fire. Gwen pretends to busy herself behind him. There’s nothing to be done, really, but she goes about it anyway, and he thinks again that he has no idea how to comfort her.

When the wood is catching, and the heat has built enough to touch his face, Elyan turns back to her. Gwen’s eyes are red in the flickering light, and her face is drawn and tired.

“You’ve been crying,” he blurts, and feels stupid, because they both know she’s been crying. Obviously.

“Yes,” she says, rubbing her cheek with a sleeve. She picks up a dress and shakes it out before putting it back exactly where she found it.

“I just came to see how you were. You seemed rather…upset at the pyre,” he says. Understatement. She nods mechanically and smooths her hands over the dress again and again.

“Lancelot was a good man,” Gwen says eventually.

“He was the best of men,” Elyan agrees, and her face crumples into some fierce emotion, and she actually _keens_ through her teeth. Her hands flutter up to brace against her ribs, as if she is holding herself in. 

He reaches out for her but stops himself, wondering if she’d actually want him to touch her. 

She sees him lift his hands and looks away, but he can see where she draws her lips into her mouth and bites down to keep the sound in. Her jaw works, and she lets out a long, rattling breath through her nose.

“Guinevere.”

“It’s fine. I’m good.” She sucks in a breath. “Just a moment.”

He hates this. He hates that his little sister feels the need to compose herself in front of him. He steels himself for her rejection even as he pulls her gently into his chest. She stands there sort of stiff and trembling, still trying not to cry. He has no idea what to say.

He goes with what he’s thinking: “It’s okay. You can cry.” He lifts a hand to stroke her hair. “You can cry, Gwen.”

He keeps saying it, whispering it to her, until her body loosens, and deflates, and she breathes a sob into his cloak. She weeps in short, gasping noises, and he tries to make his suddenly awkward hands do comforting things. They stand there for several long minutes.

“I did it all wrong, Elyan,” she says abruptly. “I was so angry at…so angry about it all, and I did it all wrong.”

“What did you do wrong?” he asks, but she doesn’t answer, just hiccups against his shoulder. He wants to know what it is, what it is that noble, guileless Gwen thinks she’s done wrong, because he’s sure he’s done worse. Perhaps she had a quarrel with Lancelot. It would explain some things, certainly, but not all. He doesn’t know whether he should ask again or try to take her mind off it.

“It’ll be alright,” he says. “It’ll be alright.” He maneuvers them over to the bed and sits her down, drawing up a blanket around her shoulders. He can tell the second she starts to feel embarrassed, for she tilts her head away from him and brings the edge of the blanket up to scrub at her face.

“I’m going to warm up some cider for us,” he says, careful not to phrase it as a question so that she can’t refuse. She sighs and starts to shake her head anyway, so he continues: “Like father used to do, remember?”

That makes her smile, just a little.

Occasionally, in the hardest, coldest parts of the winter, when the wellwater was frozen and the chill in their bones made it hard to sleep through the night, Father would bring home a jug of cider and heat it over the fire. They would huddle on the bed together, taking sweet, scalding sips until the warmth had settled in their bellies, and then Father would tell a story or two as they drifted off. Elyan has wielded fire for years in the forge, but he has never felt warmer than those nights curled up with Gwen and Father and a jug of strong cider. 

He takes his time preparing it and brings her a cup wrapped in a rag to protect her fingers. She smiles a real smile when she accepts it, bending over it and breathing in the smell. He takes up his own cup and does the same. It is all steam and fruit and fermentation and it goes straight to his head in a quick, pleasurable rush. He joins her on the bed, scooting close into her side and making sure his cloak covers up his mail where it might graze her skin. 

She raises an eyebrow at him. “You should take that armor off.” 

“In a bit,” he says. “I’ve just got comfortable.” He accompanies this with a gentle elbow to her side, and she harrumphs, still smiling that tight, tired smile, and lays her head on his shoulder. Elyan decides, right then, that he’s not joining the other knights tonight.

They stare into the fire and take slow sips from their cups. Elyan can feel the delicious warmth of it spreading through his chest and creeping down his legs.

“I missed you, when you moved into the castle,” Gwen says.

Elyan stiffens, surprised. “I’m sorry. I thought it was what you wanted.”

“You could have asked me what I wanted,” she whispers.

Elyan breathes out a heavy breath. Yes. He could have. He’d just been sure that she’d say, “Yes, go,” and he hadn’t wanted to hear her say it. So he’d gone. Avoided the battle.

“I missed you too,” he says roughly. 

She snuggles more securely into his shoulder at that, and they fall into a silence more companionable than the ones that came before it. He contemplates asking her about Lancelot but decides not to. The tenuous peace that is settling between them is too delicate to disturb tonight. Save it for another time.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Gwen says, “You’re a good man, Elyan. And a good brother. I know you don’t think so, but you are. And I know we’ve been distant..but I don’t love you any less than I ever did.” She raises a hand to fist in his cloak. “You’re my family.”

He turns his face into her hair and squeezes his eyes shut. If he opens his mouth, something pitifully grateful will fall out, so he just stays there, breathing in the scent of cider in her hair.


End file.
